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On Eve of First Voting of ’12, a Last Pitch in Iowa

On the last full day of campaigning before the Iowa caucuses, the crowds were bigger, the appeals were more urgent, but the field was just as unsettled as when campaigning began in earnest about a year ago. As the six candidates implored Iowans to turn out Tuesday night to support them, New York Times reporters captured the campaigning.

DAVENPORT, IOWA — Standing on stages across Iowa and marveling the size of his crowds, Mitt Romney says this election “is a dramatic choice between two different paths for America.” The November contest, he argues, “is an election about the soul of America.”

On a bus tour through the state over the past week, Mr. Romney has kept his focus squarely on President Obama, presenting two starkly different visions for the future of the country, and painting himself as the candidate best equipped to wrest the White House from Mr. Obama this fall.

For months Mr. Romney kept Iowa at arm’s length, perhaps mindful of his second-place finish there in 2008 despite investing heavily in the state. But as the Republican field remained fractured, he made a late play to win. And a victory in Iowa would catapult him decisively into the position of the candidate to beat in the fight ahead, as polling for the next contest, in New Hampshire a week after the caucuses, gives him a commanding lead there.

“We’re an opportunity nation, I think the president wants to turn us into a European-style welfare state, an entitlement nation, where the role of government isn’t to provide our freedom and opportunity, but instead the role of government is to take from some to give to others in the name of equality,” Mr. Romney said here Monday morning. “I don’t want to become a European welfare state. Europe doesn’t work there — it’ll never work here.”

Mr. Romney’s “closing argument” speech is generally long on patriotism — since landing in Iowa, he’s taken to quoting from “American the Beautiful” — and short on policy specifics. On Monday, however, he offered a few details of what he would do as president.

Mr. Romney said he would negotiate trade agreements to open more markets to American goods. And he said he would balance the budget by cutting government programs that are not absolutely critical, such as subsidies for Amtrak and the Public Broadcasting Service.

“I’m going to say, which of these programs do we absolutely have to have?” Mr. Romney said. “Is this program so critical to America that it’s worth our borrowing from China to pay for it?”

Mr. Romney added, deploying one of his fail-safe applause lines, “By the way, the first on the list to get rid of is Obamacare.”

PERRY, Iowa — Rick Santorum, whose candidacy once appeared to be such a lost cause that he held a campaign event where one person showed up, spent the day before the Iowa caucuses trying to convince voters that he could not only win the Republican nomination, but would unite voters against President Obama to win in November.

“Who in this race has proven that with a conservative record they were able to attract independents and Democrats?” he told a crowd of about 100 people (not including hordes of news media) who packed shoulder to shoulder inside a hotel lobby here for a voter meet-and-greet.

“Has Mitt Romney done that?” he added. “Nope. Never ran as a conservative and tried to attract any votes. Have any of the congressmen running from conservative Congressional districts proven that? Nope. Has Governor Perry, who ran as a conservative in Texas? I mean, how hard is that?”

Mr. Santorum’s sudden change in fortune — from practically pleading with voters to give him a chance to now telling overflow audiences that he is more electable than his rivals — was a sign of how rapidly his campaign has climbed in the last few days. Several polls have put him near the top in Iowa, reordering the Republican field once again.

He has benefited from the support of evangelical Christians, who form a populous and pivotal voting bloc in the state. To win, however, he needs more than just evangelical support. And he urged the crowd on Monday in his own soft-sell approach, to spread the word. “I’m asking you to use your best judgment,” he said. “I’m asking you to do what’s right. I’m not going to tell you what to do.”

He may lack brevity (he is self-deprecatingly long-winded), but he does have persistence. He has visited all of Iowa’s 99 counties. As he told the gathering in Perry, he believed the only way he could prevail in the caucuses was to meet as many voters as possible. “That’s what we did,” he said. “We came early. This is our 377th town meeting.”

DAVENPORT, Iowa — Representative Ron Paul closed out his Iowa campaign with predictions of dire consequences if the nation does not follow his recipe for large and immediate cuts to the federal debt and federal budget, as well as a warning that the country’s civil liberties have been eroded to the point that the president can target for assassination Americans whom he and his administration believe to be a “bad person.”

The crowds greeting him have only been growing, and he spoke before more than 300 people at a hotel here after being introduced by his son Rand, a Republican senator from Kentucky, who warned that “we are borrowing $40,000 a second.”

Mr. Paul, a 76-year-old Texas congressman, came in fifth place in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, but now polls show him sitting at the top of the pack with Mr. Romney, a remarkable change of fortune for a candidate who was mainly an afterthought two months ago. And in many ways, the party has drifted toward his agenda of curtailing government spending and its reach into individual lives.

Mr. Paul suggested that his campaign’s rising popularity showed that people want fundamental changes. “All of a sudden this message of the Constitution and freedom and American traditions, all of a sudden has become much more accessible and people are thinking about it,” he said.

“It is up to us now to restate the principles of the American tradition, and that is individual liberty,” he added.

To applause and shouts of “Yeah!” Mr. Paul condemned the Patriot Act, describing it as a repeal of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

“Why do they have to go after the American people? Why do they have the Patriot Act put on to the American people?” he said.

The Paul campaign believes that whatever happens in Iowa, its message will resonate in the next battleground of New Hampshire with its strong strain of individualism and suspicion of taxation.

His final line of the speech here predicted that the message of his campaign would be heard far and wide.

“We have every reason to believe that we can turn this around,” he said, “and that tomorrow we may well send a message that is going to be heard not just throughout Iowa but throughout this country, and believe it or not, it could be heard throughout the world.”

WEST DES MOINES — As she made her way down a street of small shops here, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota greeted supporters and reminded them over and again: “Tomorrow night is our chance to speak out.”

From diner to pet shop to florist, she glad-handed the crowd, which seemed much larger than those gathered at her campaign stops in recent days. Some were curiosity seekers, others were celebrity watchers. But many were her faithful: One man brought his Bible to be autographed. And Mrs. Bachmann said she was delighted to do it.

Then she made her final pitch to an electorate that seems to have turned its attention elsewhere after holding her up, just months ago, as a top-tier candidate.

“In this particular election, we can’t take a chance,” Mrs. Bachmann said. “We can’t settle. We need to have someone who’s going to campaign and govern in the image and likeness of a Ronald Reagan and a Margaret Thatcher. And that’s what I will do.”

Mrs. Bachmann appears undaunted by polls that place her in the single digits, highlighting the reversal of fortunes of a campaign that once seemed to capture the hopes of the Tea Party.

Aiming for the hearts and minds of socially conservative and evangelical Christian voters, Mrs. Bachmann said Monday: “I will stand for human life. I will also stand for the traditional values of marriage between a man and a woman.”

She touched every major issue, too: jobs, the economy, national security and, of course, she stressed an argument that she has been making since the beginning of the race — that she is the only Iowan running in the Iowa caucus.

“I was born in Iowa,” said Mrs. Bachmann, who represents the Sixth District of Minnesota. “I grew up in Iowa.”

Beyond clarifying her roots, she said: “What I intend to do is turn the economy around. That’s my background; that’s what I understand best.”

DAVENPORT, Iowa — Newt Gingrich, who so recently had the political winds behind him, conceded Monday that winning Iowa was a long shot, but he vowed to fight aggressively for New Hampshire and other early-voting states.

His strategy is to be the last conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, who Mr. Gingrich believes has only limited support despite spending millions on advertising and his campaign organization.

Mr. Gingrich’s pitch to voters is that he would bring back the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, chiefly deep tax cuts, deregulation and aggressive development of American energy.

“I should win the Iowa caucus because I’m the only candidate who would successfully debate Obama in the fall,” he said Monday. “I’m the only candidate who has an actual track record — twice, with Reagan and then as speaker — of actually changing Washington. Everybody else would be an amateur in the Obama tradition who would not know what they were doing or how to do it if they won.”

Polls showing that Mr. Gingrich’s support has been cut in half in Iowa hint at the obstacles he faces moving on to New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, where Mr. Romney’s supporters, with a far larger war chest, plan to use similar damaging ads painting Mr. Gingrich as inconsistent on issues and a Washington influence peddler.

But on the campaign trail Monday, Mr. Gingrich betrayed little sense of defeat. His crowds were strong, even if not quite as large as in the past, with more skeptical questions echoing the issues raised by his rivals.

“Whatever I do tomorrow night will be a victory because I’m still standing,” he said.

Asked the “fire in the belly” question by reporters, he said running for office was not the most important thing in the world to him.

“I want to be with my wife and children and grandchildren,” Mr. Gingrich said, but added, “I am prepared to campaign endlessly from now until November.”

“I regard it as a duty, not a pleasure. I regard it as an obligation, not an ambition. And I am prepared to do it.”

But the flub was fitting: In his final day of campaigning before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Perry emphasized his experience as Texas’s chief executive, suggesting that state government in that state — and his efforts to create jobs and rein in lawsuits — was a model for the kind of administration he would run as president.

Accompanied by a dozen Texas lawmakers, Mr. Perry boasted of slashing Texas spending, deploying state troopers to the Mexican border and governing in collaboration with home-state Democrats.

And he lit into his Republican opponents as a crowd of Washington insiders tainted by the federal government’s failures to budget responsibly and control the country’s borders.

“An outsider to go into Washington, D.C. An outsider who’s not tainted by how they’ve always done business in Washington. An outsider who’s not tainted by that connection to Wall Street,” Mr. Perry said, describing his credentials before a receptive crowd at a vineyard’s tasting room here.

Just a few months ago, Mr. Perry entered the race as a potential front-runner, a proven fund-raiser and three-term governor of the country’s second-largest state. But as Iowa Republicans prepare for the first caucus contest of the primary season, Mr. Perry remains stubbornly mired in the second tier of candidates, fighting for the allegiance of conservative caucusgoers who remain skeptical of Mr. Romney and Mr. Paul, who lead in recent polls.

Mr. Perry attacked Mr. Paul for his isolationist views on foreign policy, suggesting that “when Ron Paul is further to the left then Barack Obama, that should tell you something.”

And he singled out Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator and onetime conservative culture warrior, as “the king of earmarks” during his time in the Senate.

The presidential race, Mr. Perry suggested, would be a marathon, not a sprint. And among the self-styled conservative candidates in the race, Mr. Perry said, only he had the money and organization to take on Mr. Obama.

A version of this article appears in print on January 3, 2012, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: On Eve of First Voting of 2012, Urgent Appeals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe